Shooting Raw

When I first started using a digital camera I choose to shoot in jpg and didn't even think about the resolution. It wasn't until someone said to me that it would be crazy not to use all the mega pixels that the camera has to offer that I actually thought about what the resolution of the photo really meant to me.

The first thing to think about was what I was going to do with the photos. If they were going to be printed then high resolution was a must, so my camera setting, while still on jpg, was set to the largest it could be. However I didn't stop there long. After talking to folk at camera club and seeing what they manage to achieve with their photos it wasn't long before I braved shooting raw files.

Suddenly a whole new world of post processing was opened up to me and with it a whole new lot of questions. Which was the best software to use to process the raw files? Over the last few years I have tried many different programes for processing. Photoshop, Lightroom and Digital Photo Professional are the three that I tend to use the most.

The software that came with the camera is designed specifically for my camera and the settings on the camera are mirrored within the software. I enjoy using this software, especially when doing black and white images. I like that I can easily apply coloured filters which are great for skin tones and such like.

So anyway, these days I never shoot in anything other than raw files and I believe my images are much better for it.